Environment

Paul Krugman:

Rather than admit that pollution is a problem the government has to solve — even as the consequences of acid rain became ever more alarming, not to mention as America's failure to act provoked a near-crisis in relations with Canada, which was suffering the effects of U.S.-generated sulfur dioxide — the Reaganites insisted that there was no problem at all. They denied the evidence, questioned the science, called for more research and did nothing. Sound familiar?

And that, surely, is the line the Democrats should be pushing in this election: Republicans have become the party of denial. If a problem can't be solved with deregulation and tax cuts, they pretend it doesn't exist. [...]

The health care situation, in case you haven't noticed, is going from bad to worse. [...]

The Democrats have been offering real plans in response; they're not perfect, but they are serious.

The GOP, by contrast — and this goes as much for McCain as for the Bush administration — hasn't even tried to address concerns about coverage. Instead, it has all been about costs, which Republicans insist (wrongly) can be dramatically reduced by a policy of, you guessed it, deregulation and tax cuts.

Kriston Capps at The American Prospect:

In 1970, artist Robert Smithson rejected the gleaming white gallery spaces and "canonical" minimalism of the New York art scene in search of an entirely different setting for his sculpture. After several exploratory trips, he selected a spot more than 2,000 miles from the Big Apple: Utah's Great Salt Lake. Rozel Point, on the northeast end of the lake's Gunnison Bay, would become the home of his most important piece of sculpture: Spiral Jetty, a 1,500-foot-long, 15-foot-wide, 6,650-ton coil of black basalt rock and mounded earth extending counterclockwise into the pinkish water of the lake. The site was remote but not virgin territory. Oil seeped from the ground, and scattered around the lake were the derelict instruments from prior efforts to extract that oil. [...]

[Nancy] Holt, Smithson's widow, first got word that Spiral Jetty was in danger from Lynn DeFreitas, executive director of Friends of the Great Salt Lake, an organization primarily charged with safeguarding the lake's watershed. On Jan. 7, 2008, Pearl Exploration and Production Ltd., a Canadian oil and gas company, applied for permission to establish two exploratory wells on its land leases in Gunnison Bay, some five miles southwest from Rozel Point's shore.

[...] Smithson's writings, even when he was at his most mercurial, don't suggest that

Read the rest of this entry...

Nevada is making plans to build three large coal plants that, when operating, will emit pollution affecting Utah since we will be directly down wind of the sulfur dioxide and carbon emissions.

You can do something to help stop their production. Email Utah Governor John Huntsman and let him know that you’re concerned about the effects the plants will have on our environment. It only takes a few voices to have our concerns heard.

Email bbruso@utah.gov and let Governor Huntsman know that we agree with U.S. Senator Harry Reid: these plants are not the answer for Nevada’s energy needs.

Want to learn more about coal plants, the pollution they emit and energy alternatives?

Read articles from the:

New York Times

Las Vegas Sun

Hunter at Daily Kos has a brilliant idea for getting conservatives to care about the environment:

Currently, [no conservative] gives two twigs over the fate of the endangered northern spotted owl. It has the unfortunate habit of nesting in some prime timberlands (of which there is increasingly little, these days); that is enough to declare it an excess species, one of those nagging, irrelevant categories of animals that nobody would really miss, at least not as long as they were getting Pacific coast lumber at the lowest possible clearcut price. But would it be so easy, if it were named the Ronald Reagan spotted owl? Somehow, I think finding one of those dead in the chimney would cause a conservative far more sorrow, and the notion of wiping the Ronald Reagan owl from the face of the earth — now, that would require much more thought.

Similarly, gray wolves reintroduced around Yellowstone (where they had been extinct for a half century) are having a difficult time, at the moment. Few ranchers or farmers like the thought of wolves strolling across their property, possibly laying primal-but-illegal claim to wayward animals. But what if they were not gray wolves, but Freedom wolves? Would it be so easy to shoot a Freedom wolf in the face, or poison a Freedom wolf with tainted bait? I think not. It would be practically unpatriotic: it would be something al Qaeda would do to our wolves, not a fine, upstanding conservative. [...]

Kudzu, an invasive vine, has changed the very landscape of the southern United States. It has seemed undefeatable for decades, and is responsible for hundreds of millions of dollars in losses each year. I propose we change the balance of power by renaming it Aztlan, and sending the Minutemen after it.

My own county, in northern California, is well and truly overwhelmed by invasive starthistle. It has sharp spines and spreads like wildfire: if we rename it Muslimweed, we may be able to enlist federal support in battling it. Hitlerbeetles; the Woolly Ahmadinejad; partialbirthabortovine... with a little inventiveness, the list could go on and on.

Here's their brilliant idea for dealing with the water shortage crisis in Atlanta (Atlanta Journal Constitution):

[Republican] Gov. Sonny Perdue wasn't the least bit discouraged Tuesday after his hourlong state Capitol prayer vigil for rain ended with the sun shining through what had been a somewhat cloudy morning.

"God can make it rain tomorrow, he can make it rain next week or next month," Perdue told reporters who asked him if a miracle was on the way. [...]

The Rev. Gil Watson, pastor of Northside United Methodist Church, urged those in attendance to "pray believing we should have all brought umbrellas.

"We have not been good stewards of our land. We have not been good stewards of our water," he said. "Lord, have mercy on your people, have mercy on us and grant us rain. Oh God, let rain fall on this land of Georgia."

It didn't rain.

Rocky Anderson's Director of Communications tipped us off to this article in the New York Times from November 7:

Residents of [Salt Lake City] and its suburbs, with a combined 1.2 million people, have come to view the ties between economic development and environmental conservation in a new way. They are scrubbing the air and water, building energy-efficient homes and offices closer together, constructing regional rapid transit systems, limiting new highway construction and conserving open spaces and natural resources.

Authorities on urban policy say that Salt Lake and other cities in the West, big Eastern ones like Boston and New York and smaller ones, too, like Grand Rapids, Mich., and Charleston, S.C., have become incubators of environmental ideas and programs, with tangible results. Jobs and income are increasing. Central city populations are stabilizing or growing. Businesses are cropping up.

"Environmental policy has emerged as a central organizing principle of economic growth at the metropolitan level in America," said Robert Puentes, a researcher in Washington at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. "It's a very new development, and it's logical. Being more energy efficient and more environmentally sensitive lowers costs and makes metropolitan regions better places."

This is a followup to yesterday's post in which I said there was no free-market solution to lowering greenhouse gas emissions. Ezra Klein says that's not entirely accurate — markets can and should have a secondary role:

Even if we were all fairly committed environmentalists, there'd really be no way to effectively evaluate the amount of carbon our various activities generate. And more to the point, we don't want to. [...] Carbon consumption should be in the price of my goods, and then I can do what I often do as a consumer and make decisions based on price signals. The government needs to fix the market failure wherein the price of carbon is not assessed in the cost of products, but we actually do need a high-functioning market to accurately translate carbon information into a form we can easily and quickly work with.

So I guess it's more accurate to say that regulation is a necessary part of any plan to lower the emission of greenhouse gases. But the effect on conservatives is still the same: Problem X can be solved only with new regulations; therefore, Problem X isn't happening.

Why does do conservatives continue to deny the science behind climate change? Partly because there's no free-market solution to reducing carbon emissions (as we pointed out in this post from February). Paul Krugman in the New York Times says:

[T]he truth Mr. Gore has been telling about how human activities are changing the climate isn't just inconvenient. For conservatives, it's deeply threatening.

Consider the policy implications of taking climate change seriously.

"We have always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals," said F.D.R. "We know now that it is bad economics." These words apply perfectly to climate change. It's in the interest of most people (and especially their descendants) that somebody do something to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, but each individual would like that somebody to be somebody else. Leave it up to the free market, and in a few generations Florida will be underwater.

There are only two viable ways to cut back on greenhouse gas emissions — a tax on emissions or emission permits — and both of them involve more of that Government Regulation. And, to conservatives, Government Regulation is bad. Therefore, climate change must not be happening.

Raise your hand if you're surprised. Salt Lake Tribune yesterday:

The Mine Safety and Health Administration has cited Murray's mine in central Utah with more than 300 violations since January 2004, including 118 "significant and substantial" violations that are considered serious enough to cause injury or death.

Murray, who testified against regulation of the energy industry as part of effort to combat global warming, said the changes to the coal industry would cause losses of high-paying mining jobs and would be "extremely destructive" to the nation.

Tribune today:

He called Sen. Hillary Clinton "anti-American" in an interview with Fox News' Neil Cavuto after the senator said America needs a president who will defend workers' rights.

And he bashed politicians who, after mine disasters in West Virginia last year, called for new safety measures.

"I resent these politicians playing politics with my employees' safety," he said in an article in the Columbus Dispatch. "I resent them because I take the safety of my miners to bed with me every night." [...]

Murray backs his political beliefs with his pocketbook. He contributed more than $213,000 to Republican candidates over the last decade. Three political action committees tied to Murray's businesses have given $724,500 to Republican candidates and causes, including $4,000 to Rep. Chris Cannon.